Membership and Chapters Committee Report

Gerhard Kramer

Presented at the BoG meeting Feb 6, 2011, La Jolla, CA

1 2011 Members

• Continuing Members (2010-2011) – Max Costa – Michelle Effros – Amin Shokrollahi – Raymond Yeung – Lizhong Zheng • New Members (2011-2012) – Shraga Bross – Nick Laneman* – Emanuele Viterbo* – Liang-Liang Xie

*New BoG Members Tasks for 2011 and Issues 1) Schools of – 2011 Taiwan Winter School, January (Stefan Moser) – Europ. Winter School, Barcelona, March (A. Lozano, X. Mestre) – NA School, UT Austin, May (S. Vishwanath, T. Liu) – Wireless Summer School, Oulu, July (M. Juntti) 2) Padovani Lecturer: Roberto and Committee approved the choice Rich Baraniuk. Invitation forthcoming. 3) Chapters: Chapter of the Year Award 4) Distinguished Lecturer Program (next page) 5) Three Issues for the BoGs attention concerning our several Schools Distinguished Lecturer Program

• 2010-2011 Lecturers and Visits – Michael Gastpar – Andrea Goldsmith – : Israel, China – Amin Shokrollahi: South Africa, Iran – Sergio Verdú: Australia • 2011-2012 Lecturers (still 1 to add) – Toby Berger: – Max Costa: – Alex Grant: – :

4 Issue #1: School Approval

• Is BoG approval needed for IT Schools? • Reasons for requiring approval (of NA School): – North American (NA) School is currently one of the Society’s largest events in terms of attendance and budget – Padovani Lecture is associated with the NA School • Reasons against (in general): – Why fix what ain’t broke? – What about other Schools (South Africa, Finland, Spain, Taiwan, etc.) which are being run independently? • Simple Suggestion: – Limit BoG approval requirement to funding requests and technical co-sponsorship requests

5 Issue #2: School Registration with IEEE

• 2010 School was registered as an IEEE conference. Reasons: – Move financial liability from organizers to IEEE ITSOC – Give organizers flexibility to tap into an IEEE account rather than asking the ITSOC treasurer to approve every payment – Get IEEE conference contracting support to shape large contracts (>$25k as for 2010) – Registering is not difficult • Reason for not doing so: extra work for organizers • Suggestion: Recommend to current and future organizers: "That a School of Information Theory with a large budget and attendance be registered as a conference with the IEEE"

6 Issue #3: School Attendance

• In November, the BoG voted (12 votes for, 7 votes against, and 1 abstention): “That students attending the IT Summer School must be members of the Information Theory Society” • But this motion cannot constitute an "act of the BoG” because our constitution says (Article VII, Section 2): "Meetings, conferences, symposia or conventions of the Society shall be open on an equal basis to all members of the IEEE.” • So we must at least permit attendance by all IEEE members • Amended Motion: "That IEEE Information Theory Society Student Members attending the IT Summer School have their registration (or other) fees reduced by up to the cost of IT Society Student membership."

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